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Thursday, April 28, 2005

Yesterday's Comics

By my count, there were at least six comics that had variant covers. Now, I don't mind variant covers every once in awhile, but six in one week sounds symptomatic to me of a return to silly speculation days. Especially when one of those "variants" is nothing more than your choice of a black or white background color, on the Red Sonja comic. And why does Kolchak rate a variant cover?

Speaking of Red Sonja, I thought I'd be cute and count the number of close-up drawings of her ass, breasts and crotch in this sixteen page comic, but it got to be too much for me. It's quite clear at what market they're aiming this book at though. Man, that first page, with its fetishistic focus on her ass is just embarrassing.

Oh, and yes, it was only sixteen pages long. Which makes it a better bargain than Invincible #0, which was only twelve pages long and a quarter more.

Speaking of fan service, Spider-Woman spends a good deal of the most recent issue of New Avengers naked. And in some sort of strange, glowing bondage gear.So, yeah, that's another book that knows its target audience.[Edit for the context-impaired: See, it's a joke, and part of a larger thesis about the surprising amount of fan-service in this week's "mainstream" comics. The fact that the men are naked as well is irrelevant, because they're not the ones that the artist has admitted to over-sexualising in a creepy, adolescent way.]

And while I'm on the subject of exploitation, we got the "Who will be the new Wonder Woman?" cover of Wizard, which we did not order. They just decided to substitute the cover we did order with this one. Now, I realize that the cover and accompanying article is just an excuse to run pictures of attractive women, but I really hate it when Wizard does articles like that. Because, right now, maybe Joss Whedon knows who might be cast as Wonder Woman in the movie. So anything in Wizard's article is just fanboy fantasy casting. It's almost as if someone in Wizard's editorial department said "We're four pages short of content this month. Let's run pictures of hot chicks instead."

That Wizard cover also prompted my first psycho customer of the day moment. Upon seeing the cover by the register, the woman I was ringing up said to her companion, with no trace of irony or humor whatsoever, "If Joss Whedon casts her as Wonder Woman I will kill them both."And people will sometimes ask why the "myth" of the socially awkward, hyper-sensitive, uber-nerd nutcase fan is so persistent...

As to yesterday's comics...we were shorted our Shojo Beat sampler, which is a nuisance because, well, I wanted to read it, but also because knowing the quality of the material we're going to see in the line would help our ordering a lot. Hopefully it will ship to us next week, and not disappear into back-order limbo.

I did manage to pick up Baron: The Cat Returns, which is a nicely illustrated all-ages manga title, and the basis for the Studio Ghibli film. It was originally solicited in a Diamond Dateline update, so I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if distribution is a little spotty on it.

I've also got a wicked suspicion that, just possibly, Mike and I may be the only people who like the identity of the new Eclipso, as revealed in Day of Vengeance. I think at least part of what amuses us is that many people are almost certain to be annoyed/offended by it.

Ultimate Secret was also quite funny, for a book that consisted mostly of people talking at each other. I like it when Ellis treats his material as seriously as it needs to be treated.

Today, I think I will make up "teen-friendly" bags of Free Comic Book Day comics, since making the kids bags proved to be a good way to use up most of the day last week.